I think my obsession with the Asian cultures is starting to show. I envy you getting to go over there regularly. My wife and I have been wanting to go for forever. We think if we were going to live somewhere else, it would probably be Australia, close to Asian countries, yet not quite as different of a living environment than we're used to.

Unasked for advice: Never ever expect anything out of of a country beforehand. That way you won't be disappointed and enjoy it more. I had all these images of Japan when I landed there, most were shattered after the first month .

And Australia is cool; we'd like to live there a bit too if opportunity arise._________________Meu aerobarca esta cheoi de enguias

Unasked for advice: Never ever expect anything out of of a country beforehand. That way you won't be disappointed and enjoy it more. I had all these images of Japan when I landed there, most were shattered after the first month .

And Australia is cool; we'd like to live there a bit too if opportunity arise.

True. I actually have had my views of the area shattered a few times already, so I can expect more if I ever do get to go there. Have a couple friends currently living there. One girl in that I met during my Masters in particular has shared a lot of the experience. Actually living there seems like it would be impossible for us. Just doesn't fit our lifestyle. But yeah, Australia seems pretty nice. We'll see after we visit someday. Also need to visit Europe, as my wife wants to go back there. Of course her Aunt lives in France, so she's been there a few times. I've never gone out of the country. >.> My family was not the traveling type. I hadn't even seen the ocean in person until I went to California a few years ago for the first time on business. Was loving it, even though no one warned me the beach in West LA doesn't really get very warm. Haha._________________

Officials say a police officer seen on video punching a woman at a Philadelphia neighborhood street party over the weekend is being suspended for 30 days as of Thursday with intent to dismiss.

Commissioner Charles Ramsey took the action Wednesday against Lt. Jonathan Josey following Sunday's events during a north Philadelphia festival associated with the city's annual Puerto Rican Day Parade.

Prosecutors earlier said a disorderly conduct charge was being withdrawn against 39-year-old Aida Guzman of Chester.

A 36-second video on YouTube shows Guzman being struck in the face and falling to the ground, her face bloodied, then being led away in handcuffs.

She has marks on her lip, where the punch landed, and on her elbow, on which she fell, reports CBS staitn KYW in Philadelphia.

John McNesby, president of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police, told WPVI-TV he thinks the decision to dismiss Josey "stinks."

PARIS (AP) — Police carried out raids across France on Saturday after DNA on a grenade that exploded last month at a kosher grocery store led them to a suspected jihadist cell of young Frenchmen recently converted to Islam.

The man whose DNA was identified, named by police as Jeremy Sydney, was killed by police after he opened fire on them, slightly wounding three officers in the eastern city of Strasbourg. Officials said he had been under surveillance since last spring — around the time a French Islamic went on a shooting rampage against a Jewish school and French soldiers, killing seven people.

Ten other suspects, aged between 19 and 25, were arrested across the country on Saturday. One man was carrying a loaded gun, and police found weapons, cash and a list of Paris-area Israeli associations during the raids.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said all the arrested suspects were French and recent converts to Islam.

Four of the men involved in the raid had written wills.

"You can imagine what their other plans could have been," Eric Voulleminot, a counterterrorism official, said at a news conference with Molins.

The prosecutor described 33-year-old Sydney, sentenced in 2008 to two years in prison for drug trafficking, as a "delinquent who converted to radical Islam." He said others in the cell indicated they wanted to return to "the land of jihad."

A statement from President Francois Hollande praised the police for the raids and said the state would continue to "protect the French against all terrorist threats."

Last month's firebombing of the grocery, in a Jewish neighborhood outside Paris, happened on Sept. 19, the same day a French satirical paper published crude caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Anti-Western protests were also growing at the time against an anti-Islam film. One person was slightly injured, but the attack came after a summer of what residents described as growing anti-Semitic threats.

France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe, is trying to contain the spread of a radical Islam hostile to Western influences.

The prosecutor was careful not to draw direct links between Saturday's arrests and Mohamed Merah, a young Frenchman of Algerian descent who died in a shootout with police in March after the killings in the south of France. That attack terrorized the French Jewish community, which has since ramped up security in many parts of the country.

Merah had studied at an Islamist paramilitary camp in Pakistan and claimed ties to al-Qaida. Molins said officials did not believe the men arrested Saturday had trained abroad, but cautioned that the investigation was ongoing.

_________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

Things have been escalating with Muslims in France for a while now, more violence and death is what doesn't surprise me. There's a lot of wrong on both sides, muslim and non-muslim, but I'm pretty sure it's only going to get worse. I would not be surprised if there was a significant event in the next few months, like a truck loaded with bombs driven into the Louvre or something of that kind of scale. I doubt and hope it fails, but I'd honestly be more surprised if something horrible doesn't happen in the next few months, especially with major Christian and Jewish religious events coming up._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

Re-read the last sentence. If you're looking for something more precise, well I can't offer it, call it gut instinct._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake